Today we revisit that topic because there are so very many adverts out there and we need a reminder that this is a field in need of a change. Advertising plays a large part in shaping our views of the world, so when it’s portraying something that’s almost casually wrongheaded, that’s a problem.

Now, confession: I watch a lot of American football. And this apparently makes me the target demographic for adverts pushing light beer, pickup trucks (September is truck month! Truck Month! TRUCK MONTH! Also so are all the other months) and soft drinks. Every ad break is packed full of these, and if there’s one thing American football does not lack for, it is ad breaks. What I’m saying here is that I’ve seen a lot of these adverts, and they are seventeen different shades of bad. The truck ads are surprisingly free of the sort of overblown machismo you might expect from the automotive industry, but the beer and soft drinks? Oh, my. So let us take a look at three terrible beverage adverts.

1: Dr Pepper Ten

The advertising industry is known for its orginality. No wait, the other thing. Lack of creativity and original thinking, that’s what I meant to say. So it is perhaps not surprising that Dr Pepper have lifted the entire idea for this ad campaign directly from the old “Not for girls” thing Yorkie did.

Dr Pepper Ten, like Coke Zero before it, is a diet drink for men. Men don’t go on diets, you see, so you can’t put the word “diet” in the name of the drink. Calories are manly; watching what you consume is not. That, Dr Pepper assures us, is for the ladies. This message is forced through our eyeballs and directly into our brains via the medium of explosions and toughness, because if there is anything that women hate, it’s explosions. That’s a science fact.

And okay, you can say “But Dr Pepper are clearly being ironic! It’s a sly and hip jab at sexist values! Get a sense of humour!” Except no, the problem with ironically supporting terrible gender values is that you’re still supporting terrible gender values, and those are still an active problem that negatively impact the lives of countless people. It would be nice to be in a place where we can look back and go “Ha ha, those outdated ideas, how quaint and comical they seem now from our position of enlightenment.” But we’re not in that place yet – we still live in a world where these values are things people actually believe. Read the YouTube comments if you want to see why this is still a problem. Except don’t, because much like reading the creepy eldritch book in a Lovecraft story, reading Youtube comments can lead only to infinite screaming madness as your brain confronts unknowable horrors.

Of course, the real reason no one drinks Diet Dr Pepper is not because diet drinks are somehow effeminate, it’s because Diet Dr Pepper tastes like licking the underside of a pub table.

2. Miller Lite

Drinking the wrong light beer makes you less of a man. This is another science fact. We’re learning a lot today. Thank you advertising! This is one of many recent Miller ads that makes a link between choice of beer and ability to conform to established gender roles. They also have an “unmanly choice” range in which men are judged by their peers for making unmanly choices such as riding on a scooter or drinking the wrong brand of light beer.

See, here’s the thing: all alcoholic drinks are basically a chemical to make your brain go temporarily wonky plus some other stuff to hide the taste of this brain-wonking substance. That is all drinks, forever. So why is one flavour man-tastic and another not? It is a mystery. Someone fetch me a fruity colourful cocktail so I can make this point properly about how thoroughly ridiculous it is to gender one’s choice of alcohol.

For an added bonus, Miller throw in some token sexy female lifeguards (because maybe if you drink Miller Lite, you too will receive attention from professional models. That is how things work, right?) and some bonus “comedy” fear of people who are insufficiently attractive to meet beer advert norms. Careful, if you drink the wrong beer someone you don’t find appealing may try to force CPR on you. This is a thing that happens. Honest.

3. Fosters

To round out the trio of beverage related horrors, we have Fosters serving up a healthy heap of happy homophobia. Guys, don’t touch other guys! That’s how you get the gay. This is our third and final science fact of the day. Do you want to become gay? Of course not! That would be a massive social failing on your part. So drink Fosters, to ensure you receive your suggested daily dose of heterosexuality.

These are not values it is okay to espouse. This is not some lighthearted humour at a topic too ridiculous to be taken seriously, it is a marketing tool that helps establish harmful cultural norms.

For an added treat, it’s not just issues of gender and homophobia on which the advertising industry fails us here. Look back over those three adverts and tell me what you don’t see. Here’s a helpful hint: the answer is anyone who isn’t white. People from non-white backgrounds make up over one quarter of America’s population, but apparently 0% of its beverage-purchasing demographic.

But hey, that was decades ago, right? That was from a time when people held far more dubious views, hell people had only recently stopped using tape worms as a miracle diet (no, seriously). It was a less enlightened time, but we’ve moved on since then, yes?

Well, no, not so much. The world of advertising is still filled with dubious messages, awkward depictions of race and gender, and terrible division of products along gender lines (“This is a girl product! Make the packaging pink so they’ll buy it! This is a boy product! Fill the advert with explosions!”) So what we have here is a collection of half a dozen or so recent magazine adverts that have taken their attitudes straight from the 1950s.

Mr. Clean

It was Mothers’ Day in the US recently, and Mr Clean decided to run this advert for the occasion. Maybe I’m misinterpreting the advert. Maybe Mothers’ Day in the US is a bit different to the UK. Either way, the apparent message of “Get back to the cleaning! And get your daughter to help, she needs to learn!” seems a little… well, off.

Goldstar Beer

Goldstar Beer have an interesting view of how drinking works, one that manages to simultaneously insult both men and women. Women are complex and have to worry about matching their drinks (girly, fruity drinks, naturally) to their outfits, because they’re shallow like that. Men, meanwhile, are simple-minded creatures who are only capable of desiring one thing: beer. And not even good beer. Crappy mass-market beer.

Goldstar have another advert in this campaign that manages to be even worse on some levels – take a look for yourself here.

Nike

It’s not just gender that advertising fails on either. Here we get a delightful intersection of gender and homophobia from the fine folks at Nike. Because ballet isn’t manly, you see, and you don’t want your son to do something that isn’t manly. Best buy him some Nike trainers as soon as you can and get him doing something macho like soccer, before the homosexuals lure him into their sordid world of energetic dance routines and toned calf muscles. Because that is totally how reality works. Yes.

DeBeers

Women, you see, are basically like magpies, only larger and incapable of flight. So not very good magpies. But like magpies, women are innately drawn to shiny shiny things; the shinier the better. And as DeBeers know, if you feed her craving for shiny objects then she’ll pretend to like you and sate your desperate need for validation. Which, of course, is all women are good for. (That and cooking you dinner, which is a talent the common magpie rarely excels at.)

Wait no, all of that was wrong. What the hell, DeBeers? Really?

Prudential Financial

Social values, 1950s style. Cooking, cleaning, caring for your child. These all start with C. More importantly, they’re all things that the wife does, because hey, it’s not like she has a job, right? Women in the workplace? Madness! And all of those things are time consuming; why, hiring someone to do them all would be fairly expensive. When your wife dies, you won’t be grieving over the loss of your life’s love, you’ll be wondering who’s going to make dinner if you can’t afford to hire a cook. So you’d better get life insurance out on her. Or, I guess, buy some diamonds and lure a magpie, either way.

Qsol Servers

I was going to say something bitingly snarky and witty, but… I just… wow. I’ve been defeated by this advert. Just imagine I said something hilarious and cutting and you’re all very entertained.

So, defeated by that last advert, I’m going to stop here. I implore all of you to go out and get jobs in advertising and make better adverts than these, so that we can someday feature them in Found Feminism.